Here are a few thoughts/facts that I would like you to ponder about the current state of technology at HCSD...
15 months ago we spent just over $80,000 to put a new District-wide wireless solution in place. Through this project, we have commercial-grade wireless network access throughout 100% of the school district. Wireless connectivity issues have gone down exponentially since this implementation was completed.
When we implemented the wireless network, we created three separate virtual networks...one for Staff, one for District-provided student machines, and one for Guest or non-District proivided machines. The staff and student networks are security-enabled to control who can get on these networks, the Guest network is completely open for anyone to use.
We do have a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) environment - we allow students to bring their own devices into the school and into the classrooms - which is why we created the guest network to allow for this. We do not allow them to access our network drives using their devices because we cannot control the anti-virus and spyware programs that have or may not have on their machines, so we feel that we need this limitation in place to protect our environment from viruses and malware, but they do have complete access to the internet (filtered through our firewall to prevent them from getting to inappropriate sites).
Four months ago we increased our internet bandwidth from 3MB to 35MB, thus increasing the capacity for internet-based learning
Four months ago we upgraded our internal network structure, increasing our network speed from 100MB to 10GB - an increase of 1 Million bytes per second...which is very fast.
Four months ago we moved our entire server architecture into a virtual environment - moving from 12 servers down to 4.
Four months ago we more than doubled our storage capacity within the District.
We currently have a computer to student ratio of 1 computer to every 1.39 students (1173 computers for 1632 enrolled students)
Every elementary classroom (PK-5) has at least two working computers per classroom...many have four.
Every grade level in the Middle School has access to one mobile lab dedicated to that grade level, and two building-level mobile labs on a daily basis
Every department in the high school has at least one mobile lab dedicated to their department
Every classroom in the District has a ceiling mounted multi-media projector installed
We currently have 23 interactive white boards and/or pads installed within the District
We currently have 22 document cameras (Elmos or other models) in use within the District
We currently have 15+ iPods in use in the classrooms across the District
All new teacher and student machines (purchased in 2011) have built-in webcams
We currently have approximately 10 flip-video cameras available for checkout to teachers/students for projects
Maybe we are not as far away from having 21st Century classrooms (from a technology perspective) as people think?????
Wow, Lisa~ I did not realize that we had all of this in place. Some of these things are behind the scenes and we, as teachers, don't know that all of this tech is in place. I think we live in our own little world. We know what we have in the building that we teach in but outside of these walls we are a little clueless. As for your last question, I think you are right. This goes back to my comment a couple of meetings ago about technology being the tool and we have learn as teachers how to teach in the 21st century. How do you do that, I am not sure, I guess that is what we are trying to figure out.
Thanks for this perspective Lisa! I think tech wise we are very close (at least at the high school); it is going to be learning how to best use the technology that will move us into the 21st century as educators.
Maybe we are not as far away from having 21st Century classrooms (from a technology perspective) as people think?????
Wow, Lisa~
I did not realize that we had all of this in place. Some of these things are behind the scenes and we, as teachers, don't know that all of this tech is in place. I think we live in our own little world. We know what we have in the building that we teach in but outside of these walls we are a little clueless. As for your last question, I think you are right. This goes back to my comment a couple of meetings ago about technology being the tool and we have learn as teachers how to teach in the 21st century. How do you do that, I am not sure, I guess that is what we are trying to figure out.
Thanks for this perspective Lisa! I think tech wise we are very close (at least at the high school); it is going to be learning how to best use the technology that will move us into the 21st century as educators.